Fiona Sinclair reviews 'Yes' by Caroline Gilfillan

The title of Caroline Gilfillan‘s pamphlet seems to represent the collective affirmation of all her characters who engage in intensely passionate relationships, whether as lovers or friends. What makes the collection so compelling is the presence, in many of the poems of some form of external threat to such bonds.

In several works the natural world seems to menace the couples. Indeed in ‘our island’ the poet effectively uses the landscape of the Hebredian island to physically come between the lovers ‘‘as we lay not sleeping with the island between us.’’ In other poems close friendships are jeopardised by death, a drunken mother and a persistent suitor. Arguably the most powerful sense of threat comes in the extraordinary poem ‘Cousins’ here a childhood friendship develops into a passionate possibly sexual intimacy that will be ruptured by the girls’ arranged marriages.

As well as the couples, there is a third character who dominates the pamphlet, that of the natural world. There are broadly three landscapes, the Outer Hebrides, North America and India.  In the Hebredian poems the landscape becomes a third presence in the pair’s relationship, at times creating an uncomfortable ménage a tois.  The poem ‘Glee’ sees the narrator attacked by territorial birds on a walk then return home to an unsympathetic partner ‘‘I told you not to go that way.’’ leaving us with an uncomfortable sense of him taking sides with nature against her.

Gilfillan’s narrators have as innate ability to attune themselves to the natural world even in urban environments, this is evinced by the inclusion of natural imagery in all the poems whatever their context.  ‘Clark Kent’s’ narrator likens a friend lying on a bed to ‘‘the brindled hounds next door’’.  A simple swim in ‘Surface Tension’ describes skin as ‘‘cocoa nut –oiled’’ and makes reference to ‘‘a man with hay for hair’’. The most arresting use of such lexis comes in the poem ‘Cousins’.  To escape their arranged marriages the two girls commit suicide. We are not given a stark description of death here but the natural image of ‘‘Our fingers stretch, touch like spiders hanging from a single thread.’’ The effect is to invite the reader to regard their deaths as a victory as they are translated into something extraordinary.

By frequently referencing nature, Gilfillan skilfully shows that it is not something one looks at from a distance, but something to be actively a part of. To press her point, much of the poet’s work here appeals to our senses. We are given the ‘whiskery kiss of the milkman’s pony’, the taste of earth ’on your tongue’, and the sounds of the islands skilfully evoked by accomplished use of sibilance and alliteration. Blackbird song is especially well used as a lament in two poems on loss’ Bubbles’ and ‘Kindling’. Particularly striking is the image of the bird ‘twirling his song cap over the fence.’ which captures the joyousness of the song so aptly.